The surest route to demonic possession since female masturbation was invented ...

And other sundry misadventures.

My wife received her official state license to purchase and consume medical marijuana a few months ago. Alas, she did know this. Apparently it's a downloadable card and she was expecting a card in the mail. After wondering where it was - and not believing my suggestion that everyone in the office was too stoned to send out the cards - she finally called and was told to download it.

Then a few weeks ago, the dispensaries finally opened. Most of them in our area sold out of stock on the first day. Apparently Montgomery County has the most licenses for medical consumption of marijuana of any county in Maryland.

Once the supply chain stabilized my daughter drove my wife out to the dispensary. They were looking for one that sold Grandaddy Purple but came away with some other strain. Good old Grandaddy Purple must be the bees knees because everyone wants it.

And then last night my wife tried the MJ for the first time. She wasn't quite sure of how to work the vaporizer so she asked my daughter if it was like taking an inhaler. 'Sure' came the reply. So my wife drew in a deep toke as if she were trying to suck in every microgram of albuterol coming out of an asthma inhaler. And then she held her breath for as long as she could.

She fucking tripped balls.

First she was seeing faces in her dinner. Then bunnies.

And her lungs were on fire. Burning her from the inside out like she was being purged in the fires of purgatory.

And then she was hungry but could be arsed to move. Lifting a piece of chocolate from table to her mouth was just too much work.

She did take a drink of water. It was the best taste of water she ever had in her life, the proverbial "living water" of which ye shall drink and never thirst again.

Then for the first time in a long time, she slept the entire night through.

:: :: :: :: :: ::

For the holidays, we made the trip to Ohio and back. I took two days off for driving. (One for the way there, one for the way back.) And several days to visit with family.

Night one was the Christmas Prom with my wife's family. Her father and his new wife organized a party for friends and family. I showed up in my new kilt and Prince Charlie jacket. And, despite not being able to sing at all, I did a rendition of She's Not There by the Zombies.

Night two was Christmas Eve with my family. Five of my mother's cohort gets together with their children and grandchildren to share dinner, work through a prayer service, and then open presents. Children draw names for personal gifts. Adults partake in a White Elephant exchange. For my bit, I brought a bottle of Trump wine. This year, three fourths of the White Elephant presents were booze.

Bonus: unbeknownst to us one of my aunts was walking around with untreated pneumonia. After returning from Ohio, my mom sent me a text that she was in the hospital and that two of her grandkids had temperatures > 101. Within a couple of days, all of her grandkids and many of my cousins and my mom also had the telltale headache and fever. Fun times.

Christmas day was opening gifts with my wife's family. The adults drew names this year. I drew my wife's cousin Marcus' name. For his gift, I made him a a punk rock Christmas playlist on YouTube and went to the local Cincy independent record store and picked up some punk 45s, a couple of CDs, and a Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention shirt.

You know how a lot of supermarket's have an Asian aisle or maybe an International aisle?

Jungle Jim's has five Indian aisles, a Sri Lankan aisle, a Pakistani aisle, a Turkey aisle, a Greek aisle, a Philippine aisle, several Italian aisles, a Dutch aisle, a British aisle, five rows of hot sauces, several Scandinavian aisles. And more.

And since the last time I've been they added a beer and wine "tasting room" so you can buy a draft beer or a glass of wine to consume while you're shopping.

The seafood section has several tanks with live fish so you can pick out which Chilean sea bass (or whatever) you want and they'll butcher it for you on the spot.

If you're ever in Ohio, make the trip.

The next we drove back to DCia in 5 degree Fahrenheit weather. It didn't get into the double digits until we were on the other side of the eastern continental divide. By the time we hit the DMV, temps were finally in the thirties.

:: :: :: :: ::

I quite liked the new Star Wars movie. To reiterate what I posted to the book of Faces, the best thing about the new Star Wars movie was that people made bad decisions and had to deal with the consequences. In a lot of ways it was as a lot more like an ancient Greek play than a modern movie.

There were some things I didn't like about it. But over all it held my interest and not in a bad way.

For example, I recently watched the Warcraft movie released last year. I can't believe that Duncan Jones who directed and help write the script is the same Duncan Jones that made Moon.

If you haven't seen Moon, see Moon.

Don't see Warcraft.

:: :: :: ::

In the "winning Christmas" category, my daughters, my eldest daughter's fiancee, and my wife all chipped in to buy me the complete DVD set of Dark Shadows.

In its brief run Dark Shadows produced more episodes than all Star Trek television series and movies combined. There's over 1200 episodes.

The set comes with 130 DVDs in a very handsome wood coffin the size of a medium dog.

I think I'm going to start a bi-weekly viewing night to work through the whole series. If any of you are in the DMV and interested, shoot me a message.

:: :: ::

This week was cold enough to convince me that I need to pick up a pair of bar mitts.

I can layer my footwear and jackets and headgear such that even biking in low double digit temps is cozy.

But fingers are a problem. They get cold and its hard to keep the wind off of fingers.

Hence the bar mitt plan.

:: ::

Next up on the reading list is Hypatia of Alexandria which is a scholarly account of what we actually know of Hypatia along with an fairly objective review of just how partisan the partisan sources of what we know about Hypatia are.

The introduction basically blames Edward Gibbon for the vast swath of disinformation we have of Hypatia. This continues a trend I've noticed in a lot of areas where the "common knowledge" is basically regurgitated hogwash invented in the early and late modern era.

I was first introduced to the idea in Stephen J. Gould's A Late Birth of a Flat Earth and have since been introduced to the same idea in the conventional wisdom concerning Galileo, Christmas traditions, and now Hypatia.

The Christmas traditions crack me up the most. Basically Protestants made up a bunch of crap about how Pagan the Christmas traditions of the Catholics were and the early modern free-thinking crew picked up on it and made it the conventional wisdom.

Now it's one of those things where one must fact-check the fact-checkers.

Oh, the humanity.

::

I need to get back into the habit of running more. Before the holidays I did two weeks where I managed to run three times each week.

I've been using MJ since I moved to Colorado a few years ago for my ulcerative colitis. When I'm really sick it's sometimes the only thing that works and will keep me asleep the whole night. I don't have a medical card, but you don't exactly need one here, in Colorado it just reduces the sales tax and ups the single purchase amount to 2oz. Now that I'm getting better, I treat it like alcohol: a quick hit to relax before bed to clear the work stress.

I don't know what condition she has, but most medical strains are Indica and are high in CBD and low in THC to reduce the psychoactive effects.
Ah, sociopathy. How warm, how comforting, thy sweet embrace. - MNS

That's how I, as I now live in a permissive state, enjoy the mary-jane. Takes about two hours to come on, but its easier to control, at least for me. For the wife, they make her sick, so she uses a vaporizer. The dispensary is a fount of advice regarding how to avoid super tripping balls and just getting the relaxed so I can sleep effect.

On to your history readings....I have found, in much *much* smaller ingestion of ancient history than you, the exact same phenomenon that the Victorian era seemed to make a lot of shit up that suited their narrative and now upon re-examination long-held truths are being re-examined, especially about history before Christ. It's not a study area I enjoy much, most of what I've gotten has been decidedly non-scholarly podcasts on the subject, but well researched.

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